Basil started the day with the visit to the workshop. As I said yesterday, he’s been having trouble with his batteries.

In reality he didn’t even make it into the workshop. The motorhome service centre in Reims, treated Basil like an NHS malingerer. A mechanic came out into the carpark, poked around inside Basil for a minute and prononounced “it’s a fuse, you stupid Englishman”. He said it in French and he probably didn’t insult me out loud, but that was what he thought to himself. So a new fuse and Basil is right as rain.

This delayed us sufficiently to scupper our plans for the day, so we drove south for the day, through more rolling farmland under leaden skies.

We stopped for lunch in the pretty little village of Chaource, where we refilled Basil with 110 litres of water at an aire and emptied all his dirty bits. That should keep us going for 5 or so more days.

Chaource

Chaource

A walk round the village revealed Chaource to be the home of a famous cheese, so we visited producer and procured a small sample for our journey.

The day ended with a long drive on minor roads covered in mud. Having started the journey looking pristine, Basil now looks as if he’s been on a 4×4 awayday!

We finally parked up in the car park for the Chateau de Bussy-Rabutin (47.560597, 4.525128). It isn’t an official aire, and has no services, but they allow motorhomers to stay overnight, which is jolly kind of them.

It looks a beautiful Chateau and we will have an explore tomorrow.